{"id":1189,"date":"2017-12-18T19:25:40","date_gmt":"2017-12-18T19:25:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=1189"},"modified":"2017-12-19T19:31:32","modified_gmt":"2017-12-19T19:31:32","slug":"forced-confession-of-academic-on-death-row-in-iran-has-no-legitimacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=1189","title":{"rendered":"Forced Confession of Academic on Death Row in Iran Has No Legitimacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Islamic Republic Has Long History of Forcing False Confessions in Politically Motivated Cases<\/p><\/div>\n

December 18, 2017\u2014The forced confession broadcast December 17 on Iranian state TV and used to validate the death sentence against\u00a0Ahmadreza Djalili\u00a0is completely illegitimate and in no way validates the unlawful judicial process used to convict the Iranian-born Swedish resident on espionage charges.<\/p>\n

The Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) calls for the immediate suspension of Djalili\u2019s death sentence and a judicial review of the case against him that fully incorporates due process.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Islamic Republic has been using forced confessions to validate the prosecution of individuals that they have no evidence against for decades,\u201d said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of CHRI.<\/p>\n

\u201cDetainees are held incommunicado in solitary confinement, threatened, abused, denied proper access to counsel, psychologically broken\u2014and then forced to sign patently false \u2018confessions,\u2019\u201d Ghaemi said.<\/p>\n

Djalali, an emergency medicine specialist and physician, has been in jail in Iran since April 2016. He had travelled to Iran from Sweden, where he lives with his wife and two children, on the invitation of Tehran University to speak on disaster relief. He has been accused of providing information to Israel that was allegedly used in the assassination of several Iranian scientists.<\/p>\n

Djalali,\u00a0held in solitary confinement for three months and denied access to a lawyer for seven months,\u00a0was\u00a0sentenced to death<\/a>\u00a0by a Revolutionary Court in Tehran in October 2017.<\/p>\n

In an undated\u00a0letter<\/a>\u00a0from Evin Prison,\u00a0Djalali\u00a0wrote that he was imprisoned for refusing to spy for Iran\u2019s Intelligence Ministry. His wife has\u00a0stated\u00a0<\/a>that her husband was forced to rehearse and read the confession that was broadcast, and that his interrogators threatened that his family and children would be killed if he did not make the taped statement. The young physicist\u00a0Omid Kokabee<\/a>\u00a0was imprisoned in Iran for over five years for similarly refusing to conduct military research for Iran.<\/p>\n

The state-run Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) has a long history of broadcasting such\u00a0forced confessions<\/a>. Typically well-staged productions, they are used to defame dissidents, intellectuals, and other individuals whom the authorities wish to discredit, legitimize their prosecution, and amass public support for their sentences.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese confessions have no value without access to due process. Iran\u2019s continued use of these forced statements is a travesty of justice that should be forcefully condemned by the international community,\u201d Ghaemi said.<\/p>\n

Sweden has condemned the death verdict against Djalali and 175 Nobel prize laureates have\u00a0petitioned<\/a>\u00a0the Iranian authorities to release Djalali.<\/p>\n

For interviews, contact:
\nHadi Ghaemi
\n+1-917-669-5996
\nhadighaemi@iranhumanrights.org<\/a><\/p>\n

Visit our website:\u00a0www.iranhumanrights.org<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

December 18, 2017\u2014The forced confession broadcast December 17 on Iranian state TV and used to validate the death sentence against\u00a0Ahmadreza Djalili\u00a0is completely illegitimate and in no way validates the unlawful<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[373,374],"class_list":["post-1189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-rights","tag-ahmadreza-djalili","tag-ahmadreza-jalili"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1189"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1190,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions\/1190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}